


This Creature in My Chest

by chicagothighs



Series: Words Said and Unsaid [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feelings, Internal Monologue, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 23:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16005851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagothighs/pseuds/chicagothighs
Summary: Jack drinks his own whiskey after rejecting Phryne's.Set after the end of Blood at the Wheel.





	This Creature in My Chest

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt “I shouldn’t be in love with you!”
> 
> Some angst for us all.

Jack shoved the photograph back into the case file. It was one of several Collins had taken during the investigation of Leonard Stevens's death at the Green Mill. He shook his head, a scowl starting to form on his lips. Those photographs had mocked him before, but never this severely.

Three glasses of cheap whiskey in, and Jack still couldn't decide if she was an unstoppable force or an immovable object. But as he'd learnt time and time again, she very often embodied both at the same time. And he detested her for it.

Above all, though, he detested himself for the way that day's events had affected him. He poured himself another glass.

It hadn't taken long for Collins's choppy message to make sense to him. The deluge of panic and concern had possessed him to sprint to the motor car and race down there.

"Surely anyone would have done the same," he rationalised aloud, "for a good friend."

And so he poured himself another whiskey.

When he had realised it wasn't her, wasn't Phryne—well, that deluge had simply washed away, without so much as small splash in his gut to commemorate its exit. For a moment, he had acknowledged how absurd it was for an officer of the law to be relieved about misidentifying the deceased.

But there was no time to wallow in his guilty conscience, was there? Because there she was. All of life's passions, sculpted into her alabaster figure. And she had the audacity to carry on.

The joke had been her idea, then. Her latest ruse. So he'd tried to keep her at arm's length. To tell her with and without words that he wasn't interested in playing anymore—not when he'd been so emotionally compromised just moments before, and especially not after he'd realised what the panic and concern had left behind.

It was fear. Real and raw as it took its rightful place inside his chest. Jack had known then, how foolish he had been. Once fear made itself known so eagerly, he knew, it would never be the same. Even now, it held his heart in a vice-like grip, squeezing tighter with every exhale.

The whiskey eased it a bit, though. And so he poured himself another.

It was not as if it hadn't been there before. Fear had always been there. Slumbering through those first years with Rosie. Awakened by the war. Growing larger as he had drifted farther from his wife, and angrier as his divorce proceedings inched nearer and nearer.

Phryne had helped quell it, certainly. That's why he allowed her into his crime scenes and his office at all. Having someone to keep up with was a welcome change, especially when everyone else seemed to lag behind. It was exciting. She was everything Rosie was not.

Of course he compared.

Rosie had been gentle and caring. She still was. Rosie'd been there to see him off, and she'd been there to welcome him home after the war. Except home had changed. Or perhaps he had changed.

And she had so desperately wanted him to heal, to be better, and to return to his old self—that she was trying everything. And when nothing had helped, she'd decided that maybe she wasn't what he'd needed. Jack knew now, that time had been what he needed.

He missed Rosie still. Her warmth, her excellent stories, their days spent cycling under the sun... It was familiarity that they'd shared. Burning passion had never been there, but Jack was certain that love had. Undeniably, love had been there. Rosie had given everything in her power to will him better. He was grateful, always. And he regretted the way he could not provide a home for her the way she had done for him.

"But that damn woman," he huffed and downed his whiskey.

It was apparent that Rosie was everything Phryne could never be. The latter was unattached and relentless in pursuing her own flights of fancy. No regard for others whatsoever. No regard for the law, even! She seemed intent on pushing every limit, crossing every boundary, that it was a wonder she wasn't clapped in irons already.

And it scared him witless.

It was a different kind of fear from the one that haunted his dreams. Dreams of war reminded him of his service, of coming face to face with one's mortality. Endless nights pondering whether or not he would falter if he were tortured. Endless days not knowing how long they had left together. Wondering how Rosie would react, reading a letter that reported his death.

That bone-chilling fear came with the idea of ceasing to exist. This was one that had started from inside him. The fear of someone he held dear being ripped away, not a thing in his control.

With Rosie, it had happened so gradually that they never even noticed. It had been the nature of their relationship to provide for one another. So when the time came that neither could do so for the other, they had come to that decision together.

With his mates in the war, well, no one could really tell, could they? If their next day was to be their last? He feared for his brothers' lives as much as he did for his own, but there was no use philosophising on life or death. There'd been a war to win.

But with her, it felt like he was staring into the void. No clear solution, no alternative distraction. There were his feelings, yes, as well as her flagrant disregard for anything more than fleeting. He knew there was hardly a chance in Hades he could reconcile the two.

And so he'd taken steps to nip it in the bud. If it had indeed not yet bloomed into something that would demand even more of his time and attention.

Earlier, in his motor car, he had gone through almost all the permutations on how that evening might have gone. Still, not in any of them did she react the way she had. Hurt eyes searching his, eyelashes fluttering. Voice choked with emotion.

Pleading at most, because everyone knew Phryne Fisher did not beg.

It had taken all his self-restraint to remember that the pain in his chest was growing ever stronger, and that the only way to ease it was not with more night caps at Wardlow or close encounters with one Miss Fisher. It was by turning around and leaving, no matter how difficult.

"I shouldn't be in love with you." His angry confession was lost on the four walls of his study.

The tightening in his chest told him otherwise, and Jack finished off his whiskey with a grimace.

He supposed he needed to stock up on his own bottles, now that his drinks wouldn't come from the pristine decanter in her parlour. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit longer this time, because I'm still very much easing into writing fic. Any comments are much welcome.
> 
> Also, I took a few liberties dreaming up Jack and Rosie's days together. I really hope you don't mind.


End file.
